


Beautiful Lies

by Velvedere



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, shippy but not in a romantic way, surrogate father figure feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re not my son,” he said, though with no real conviction.</p><p>Even blatant lies were beautiful when a heart wanted them enough.</p><p>“I could be,” said the shade in his son’s voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful Lies

Erik Selvig tapped the eraser end of his pencil thirty six times against the pad of paper sitting in front of him.

He didn’t know why he counted.

The computer screen he’d been staring at for the last fifteen minutes hadn’t changed. A blinking cursor sat patiently at the end of a word he’d left unfinished.

 _Postula_ |

Postulate.

What had he been writing? He couldn’t remember. The headache had come on sharp this time. And sudden.

They were getting more frequent.

Erik stopped tapping his pencil and read over the last few lines in his report to SHIELD. Notations on changes to energy equations. More theories on how to narrow down the spectrum of radiation emitted by the Tesseract when it was active. Suggestions on how they might finally be able to break through the Coulomb barrier without having to move their labs to the surface of the sun.

He didn’t remember writing any of it.

If he tried hard, he could almost remember it, but it was like trying to remember an old movie he’d seen years ago. Brief flickers and sputters of hazy images linked together in haphazard ways that didn’t quite make sense.

_We’d be making better progress if those fat-cheeked bureaucrats would just give me the equipment I’d asked for..._

Erik closed his eyes and shook his head. His headache spiked, driving screws deep into his skull just behind his eyes. He put both palms to his temples and pressed hard, leaning forward onto his desk. As though that would help.

“Hey, Doc?”

Darcie’s voice.

The headache vanished.

Erik looked up. Relief from the pain flooded the tension from his posture as much as the smell of the coffee she set down in front of him. He took it gratefully, blew off the steam and sipped.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” he said, and smiled, appreciative. “Fine. Just a little tired. Headache.”

“Want some meds?” She gestured over her shoulder towards her backpack. “I’ve got Tylenol, Excedrin, Ibuprofin...”

“Thank you.” He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“What’s all this?” Darcie leaned around his shoulder and adjusted her glasses to get a look at his computer screen. Her idea of personal space remained non-existant, and in the cascade of her full brown hair Erik got a whiff of whatever flower-scented shampoo she’d used last.

That was different.

Usually it was more of a citrus smell.

“Just an extra project I’ve been working on,” he said, as casually as possible as he scooted a little in his chair to give her more room.

“That’s a SHIELD logo.” She grinned, spotting the circular emblem in the top corner of the file that was truly hard to miss. “Is this some super top secret government thing I’m not supposed to know about?”

“Probably.”

He moved the mouse to click the document shut. Darcie’s catching him at work wasn’t overly worrisome. (He’d be more worried if she _didn’t_ pry.) But what Darcie knew inevitably made its way around to Jane, and—

“And what’s this?” Darcie tapped the pad of paper sitting on the desk.

Erik looked to it. He saw the indentations where he’d tapped the pencil too many times.

He also saw the runes sketched across the white paper at odd angles, like doodles.

He supposed he must have done that, too.

“Where’s Jane?” he asked, rather than answer. He knew what the runes said – somehow, he knew – but that was one piece of information Darcie wasn’t get out of him. No matter how much her hair smelled like flowers.

Fortunately, Darcie peeled off with a sigh. She straightened and made her way back to the coffee machine to clean up discarded sugar packets and empty creamer cups.

“Where she usually is this time of night,” she said, and pointed upward. “Stargazing.”

“Night?”

Erik looked to the windows. The wall of glass that made up the old Smith automotive lot where they did their work was black. Flickering green and red neon from the sign outside lit the pavement. Beyond that were the meager lights of Puente Antiguo.

And, beyond that...

“I didn’t realize how late it was,” he mumbled.

“Maybe you should call it,” Darcie suggested. “You look tired.”

Erik gave a noncommittal grunt, and looked down to his coffee.

He saw his reflection waver in the dark liquid.

_That sounds like a good idea..._

“That sounds like a good idea.”

He swirled the contents without any further interest and downed it in one gulp. He handed the cup back to Darcie, then shut his laptop and packed it into its carrying case.

“Wanna ride?” Darcie jerked a thumb towards Jane’s parked jeep. “We can take the company car.”

_No thanks._

“No thanks,” Erik mumbled.

_It’s a clear night._

“It’s a clear night.”

_I’ll walk._

“I think I’ll walk.”

“Okay.” Darcie smiled and waved after him, carrying two fresh cups of coffee towards the stairs that led up to the roof. She would take one up to Jane and the two of them would sit and watch the stars.

Only Jane would be looking for someone.

Erik knew that much.

“See you tomorrow, bright and early!”

“Goodnight.”

Erik locked up behind him, trusting the girls had their keys to do the same. Either one by themselves was worrisome, but when they were together, they managed to cover for each other’s faults.

Jane’s scatter-brain and forgetfulness, especially when she was excited.

Darcie’s tendency to focus on smaller details that didn’t really matter.

Erik paused long enough in the empty lot to glance back towards the roof of the building. At this angle, he couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there. He could just make out the glow of the barbecue grill Jane used as a firepit.

He felt a swell of pride and affection for his girls, and also worry. The former disappeared with a shiver of cold up his back.

It was always a cold night in the desert.

He hoped they had their coats.

*****

The place Erik had found to stay in town had a great deal in common with the automotive lot they used in place of a laboratory: it was small, mostly inadequate, but the rent was cheap. It was within walking distance of the lot – then again, everything in Puente Antiguo was in walking distance of everything else – which eliminated the need to procure a car.

Erik hadn’t planned on staying long. He’d only brought a duffle bag’s worth of belongings. When Jane had called him at Culver so excited about her discovery here in New Mexico, Erik had expected a few days’ worth of visit. Just enough to see if she really was onto something, or if he’d have to find a way to talk her out of another fantastical theory and coax her into coming back home.

That had been three weeks ago. Now he was in touch with SHIELD every day, and they had started talk of moving him and the girls to one of their headquarters even further out in the desert.

Sometimes Erik wondered why he ever left Norway.

He flipped the light on in the tiny apartment and set his laptop case down just inside the door. Coat and scarf came off and were tossed over the back of a chair.

There was minimal furniture. No pictures on the walls. There was no real need for any. The apartment’s only function was as a temporary storage unit and a place to sleep.

The only item of personal significance Erik had brought with him was a framed photograph. It sat propped against the wall on the low table just beside his bed.

No ornamentation. No flowery text. Just an old, slightly fuzzy picture of a blonde woman and a dark-haired teenage boy, smiling as they posed.

Erik smiled a little when he saw it. He always did.

He reached out and gently picked up the frame. Wooden. Worn. Chipped and nicked in places for the amount of time and distance it had traveled.

Erik held it in his hands for a moment – maybe two – then set it back down with a gentle reverence. He had to prop it against the wall because the stand on the back had worn out and fallen off a long time ago.

He should really get a new frame.

Maybe someday.

He grabbed a shower and changed clothes, and set a TV dinner in the microwave to heat, though he wasn’t really hungry.

While the machine droned on, Erik went to the bathroom mirror and pulled up his shirt.

This was another habit he’d developed since coming to New Mexico.

Holding the cloth up with one hand, he reached beneath it with the other, feeling across his skin and over his ribs where he could remember – very distinctly – a shard of glass had embedded itself all the way to his lung not even a few weeks ago.

He could remember the stab. Not so much the pain, as shock and adrenaline had done well to keep that at bay. But the feeling of something there when it shouldn’t have been, slicing deeper, every time he breathed...

“I should tell you to go on and leave me behind,” he remembered saying to Jane, grasping her hand. All around them buildings blew outward and fire and glass rained. “But...please don’t.”

It should have killed him. It _would_ have killed him, if the stranger who’d kept insisting he was Thor-the-God-of-Thunder hadn’t grabbed something from a pouch brought by his equally strange friends and broken it over his wound.

The glass had dissipated. The wound healed. It even mended the gash in his clothing.

Erik felt over the place where he’d been stabbed.

Not even a scar.

In a way, he wished he’d at least been left with that. It would provide some measure of validation to all of this. Proof that it had happened. That it had all been real.

But what had it been? Wormholes and advanced alien societies and technology they couldn’t understand. Jane had quoted Arthur C. Clarke. SHIELD was trying to emulate what the Asgardians and the...was it the Destroyer?...had done so naturally.

But Erik believed, in his heart, where no amount of education and college degrees could quite reach, that even science and technology could only go so far.

_Magic._

The microwave dinged.

Erik sighed and let his shirt drop.

 _Magic and science are the same thing_ , he remembered one of his colleagues saying at Culver. _The exact same thing. It’s all just a manipulation of energy._

After what he’d seen, Erik wasn’t so sure.

He was just reaching for his dinner tray when the headaches struck again.

It wasn’t unusual for a person to develop migraines over the course of their life. Erik knew that. Since the headaches had started, he’d thought perhaps that’s all it was.

This time it felt more like a heart attack.

He choked off a cry and staggered as though hit, dropping towards the bed. He managed to catch himself on its side before hitting the floor too hard.

He grabbed at his chest. Tried not to breathe too deeply.

The pain subsided gradually, by degrees.

By the time it faded, he was no longer alone.

There was someone else there.

In the room.

There, but...not there.

The shadow of a shadow perched on a shelf on the other side of the room, one knee drawn up. Eyes wide like a predatory bird.

Erik suddenly thought of a hundred different variations of the Peter Pan story he’d come across over the course of his life, and how none of them had quite done justice to the child thief as a dark, sinister vision, stealing into one’s room to snatch them away in the night.

Erik settled where he was, propped up on the floor against the bedside as he caught his breath.

Now, he remembered.

The Tesseract. They had to find a way to stabilize it. It had to be made ready to open a gate to...to...

To where?

“Hello again, doctor,” the shade purred. To Erik’s eyes, he was young, dressed in the fine golds and dark greens of royalty. But behind his eyes lay hints of knowledge that spanned centuries, and a will – _such_ will – that promised change as much as it demanded power.

He’d never told Erik what his name was.

“This can’t keep going on,” Erik rasped, hearing his own voice sound dry and strained. “The others...they’re getting suspicious.”

“I know,” said the shade. His voice was so soft. Like a hand dipped into a pool of water without disturbing it. “That’s why we must act soon.”

“I don’t know what you think I can do.” Erik wiped at his forehead and the back of his neck. “I’ve tried everything...”

“You don’t have to do anything beyond what you’re told,” the shade whispered. “When next SHIELD calls, you’ll accept their offer without negotiation. We need their facilities.”

Erik felt a brief throb in his skull as the suggestion took root. He wouldn’t remember it later, but when the time came, he would agree.

Not agree.

_Obey._

He turned his face towards the floor. He couldn’t look at the shade too long without feeling like he was going to fall in to that darkness.

The shade tilted his head. His voice, when it came, carried a deceptively sympathetic lilt.

“Is something wrong, doctor?”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Erik mumbled.

To which the shade laughed. So softly.

“My dear doctor...” Again, that false sympathy. Like a snake’s lick. “You don’t have a choice.”

“I can expose you...”

Even as he said it, Erik knew the uselessness. He looked back to the shade’s dark eyes in a briefly-lived show of defiance. It died quickly before his smile, which never wavered.

“Is that so,” the shade breathed, and leaned down.

_“How?”_

Suddenly, Erik couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. The throb in his skull took up again and he could only bow his head and bear it, unable to struggle against forces he couldn’t understand.

And yet, in that moment, he saw something.

He saw a bridge, gleaming and glittering beneath an open cosmos that sparked with a reflection of its power. Overheard were the colors of nebulas.

But the bridge was...broken. Shattered. Its jagged edges stabbed into nothing. Led nowhere.

A cosmic wind whipped at the hair and cloaks of the figures who stood there.

A father...a brother...and...

Erik blinked, and the image was gone.

But the sensation remained.

The shade eased its power, and he could breathe again.

“We’re already far too invested, doctor,” purred the shade. “There is no stopping now.”

Erik coughed, and rubbed his throat.

“I know about you,” he rasped.

The shade tilted its head.

“I’m sorry?”

“I know about you...” Erik pushed himself up to sit. He could rest his back easier against the bedside that way. “I know.”

The shade narrowed his eyes. Confusion flickered across his pale features first, then irritation.

“What could you possibly know?” he spat, his words dripping black disdain.

“You lost someone.” Erik turned his eyes aside towards the photograph on the table. The woman and the boy still smiled, frozen in time.

He could still hear the sound of the phone ringing. The call from the hospital.

He could remember exactly the way his wife’s body had sagged against the wall. The way she covered her mouth with both her hands.

“I lost someone, too.”

Maybe the shade reacted to that. Erik didn’t turn to look.

He could still hear Lena’s voice, cutting into an already wounded heart.

_...your fault! If you had just let him...wouldn’t have taken the keys...!_

It _was_ his fault.

She left him not long after that.

“Loss is the nature of existence,” the shade said coldly.

“Your father loves you,” Erik whispered. “All fathers love their sons.”

In an instant, the shade was across the room. He stood over him, glowering and radiant with dark power. The light overhead burst. If there had been any plants in the room, Erik was sure they would have wilted and died.

He cowered on the floor, lifting one arm in feeble defense.

“What do you know of it?” the shade hissed. “You! A human. A _mortal_. What do you know of loss, when your lives are not even a blink in the time of a god? Do not speak to me as though you know. You know _nothing_!”

His rage passed quickly. The radiant darkness receded, though with the broken light the room remained plunged in black. As Erik’s eyes adjusted to what managed to filter in from the town’s spread outside, he looked up, fearful but wondrous.

The shade – the god – extended his hand.

“Come now,” he said, smiling again, as though the outburst had been no more than a trick of the night. “We have work to do, and you will be well rewarded.”

Erik didn’t take it.

“I don’t want any reward,” he said.

“I can give you knowledge. Truth.”

“I’ve had my fill already.”

“There must be something you want.” The shade smiled, and his image flickered. Changed.

Erik saw Jane.

Then he saw Darcie.

“You will find me a most benevolent god.”

Erik turned his face away again, disgusted. Mostly with himself.

“I don’t want anything you have to give,” he muttered.

“What if I could restore to you what you’ve lost?”

Erik looked back. This time, Lena’s gently smiling face tilted down at him. Her blonde hair fell forward the way it always did, and briefly Erik felt the inexplicable urge to reach up. Tuck it back behind her ear.

Then she changed, and he saw his son.

Not as he had been in the hospital, but as Erik remembered him: dark-haired, brassy, full of that youthful, exuberant energy that had led to so many of their fights.

Erik didn’t remember his eyes being so blue. Crackling with barely-contained power.

But he took his hand. Stood up from the floor.

“You’re not my son,” he said, though with no real conviction.

Even blatant lies were beautiful when a heart wanted them enough.

“I could be,” said the shade in his son’s voice.

Erik felt the burn of tears threaten in his eyes. He didn’t stop himself from moving forward. Nor did the shade stop him, if he was unwelcome.

He put his arms around him. Not his son, but _someone’s_ son...someone who had been lost and needed finding again. Maybe even by someone like him, who hadn’t held on enough when he’d had the chance.

Erik closed his eyes and hugged him tight, and it felt real.

Like forgiveness.

He felt the shade’s hands lift and touch his back. Light, but it was enough.

He was right.

They had a lot of work to do.


End file.
